Production Artifacts #1 (from Moore)

Digging in the mound, I found a blank Storyboard Card, the basic Lego part of a programmed instruction lesson.

Usually the writer would end up with a fat stack of cards wrapped with a rubber band. In the case of the Automotive Series, the stack was always fouled with dirt and grease from its journey through the pre-production phase called "student testing."

Which reminds me of the perils of testing the car programs. I was doing the Fuel Systems series and had a lesson in which the student disconnects the fuel line going into the carburetor. At the end of the review, the student (and supervising writer - me) failed to make sure the nut was securely tightened at the inlet port. If this had happened on the "studio car" (Cardinal's much-abused 1974 Malibu), someone would have caught the problem. But we were testing the lesson on our boss's (Don A's) sporty red Mercury Cougar. Don luckily discovered the problem on the way home. We could've created an engine fire engulfing the prized Cougar, and possibly lit up our VP of Production too. It was a major blunder.